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Music: Sing, choirs of angels

Stephen Pettitt advises those weary of seasonal kitsch on the classic sounds of Christmas

For dedicated classical-music lovers, Christmas can be aural agony, signalling a mass lapse of musical taste as our senses are assaulted by a surfeit of seasonal dross in shopping malls and concert halls alike. But it doesn’t have to be like that. One needs only to adopt a hermit-like attitude, shop for everything on the internet, remove the plug from the television and overlook that cheesy CD of traditional carols that Aunty Dot so thoughtfully bought both last year and the year before. And if all that is not humanly possible, then at least counter the dross with a healthy measure of Christmas listening that, if it’s a little more challenging than the usual, is infinitely more rewarding.

If I happen to be at home on Christmas Day, my own tradition is to play, as soon as I am awake and have a cup of steaming Blue Mountain in my